Kramer on Hart on Legal Powers as Legal Competences @cambridgelaw

Matthew H. Kramer, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, has published Hart on Legal Powers as Legal Competences as University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 19/2021. Here is the abstract.

This paper first recapitulates the objections by H.L.A. Hart to the ways in which John Austin’s command model of law obfuscated the importance and the very existence of power-conferring laws. Although those objections are familiar in the world of contemporary legal philosophy, their insightfulness is highlighted here because they contrast so sharply with Hart’s own neglect of power-conferring laws at some key junctures in his theorizing. In the second half of this paper, I ponder a few of the junctures where Hart failed to heed the admonitions which he had so deftly leveled against Austin.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.